How About a Megatons To Megawatts Program For US Nuclear Weapons? 146
Lasrick writes "Dawn Stover looks at the incredibly successful Megatons to Megawatts program, which turned dismantled Russian nuclear warheads into lower-grade uranium fuel that can be used to produce electricity. The 1993 agreement between the U.S. and Russia not only eliminated 500 tons of weapons-grade uranium, but generated nearly 10% of U.S. electricity consumption. The Megatons to Megawatts program ended in December, but Stover points out that the U.S. has plenty of surplus nuclear weapons that could keep the program going, without the added risk of shipping it over such huge distances. A domestic Megatons to Megawatts, if you will. This would be very cost effective and have the added benefit of keeping USEC, the only American company in the uranium enrichment field, in business."
Burn the Uranium in safe Thorium reactors... (Score:4, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M... [wikipedia.org]
Should've done it years ago.
Russians sold it, company declared bankruptcy. (Score:4, Interesting)
Russians got stiffed.
I know a lady who worked for the company at the time.
She also got stiffed to the tune of 10K un-reimbursed travel expenses.
But nothing like the Ruskys. Who learned the hard way about western bankruptcy laws.
BTW the company owner is still wanted in Russia, but what he did is not illegal in the USA, so no extradition.
Massively wasteful (Score:3, Interesting)
To take highly enriched U235 or Plutonium, that has cost 100k's per kg to produce, and convert it to a lower grade fuel. Even if you don't like nuclear weapons there are myriad potential future non-military uses that may crop up that will need highly enriched fuels, like:
Nuclear interplanetary rockets, Space nuclear power reactors, nuclear aircraft, trains,trucks, tractors, earthmovers, and (less likely) nuclear ships, where weight is critical or small size for shielding or safe containment in event of a crash is critical. We are going to run out of fossil fuel eventually and will still need high density power sources for transportation and primary production.
In the case of aircraft, nuclear power may offer the only long term solution for transporting billions of wealthy future-humans around the world at the high speeds they will demand without fucking up the stratosphere like any combustion based propulsion does.
They already were, as part of the first program. (Score:5, Interesting)
They already were, as part of the first program. US HEU was also converted, mostly from stocks, since the U.S. primarily uses Plutonium bombs, both as fission warheads, and as triggers for fusion warheads.
Addressing the suggestion itself:
The HEU supply available from weapons is now too low to deal with demands of the power industry, which is why the program came to the negotiated close that it did in the first place.
The U.S. generally could deal with both the fuel availability problem and the Plutonium weapons "problem" by:
(1) fuel reprocessing, which was disallowed by executive order of then-president Jimmy Carter, This would solve the "nuclear waste" problem at the same time, as it's not actually "waste", it's actually "unreprocessed nuclear fuel".
(2) use of Plutonium reactors which could utilize said Plutonium in the first place (which would imply breeder/fast breeder reactors, which the U.S. doesn't build due to it's non-proliferation stance, which appears to be successful, since North Korea... er... wait...
(3) another START treaty involving both Russia and China, so that the warhead reductions would be mutual. The current number of warheads is approximately those needed to implement the Brookings Institute's M.A.D. policy in the first place, since you pretty much have to drop a warhead within 100m of a hardened target to ensure the destruction of the target, and there are that many hardened targets. Nuclear weapons aren't magical in their ability to destroy -- in fact, the cluster bombs and fuel-air explosives we've been using in Iraq and Afghanistan have considerably more explosive power than tactical nuclear weapons.
So in all, the proposal is unworkable until you reverse a U.S. fuel reprocessing policy set by executive order, reverse a U.S. reactor technology policy set by executive order, and then engage in arms reductions talks with people who are currently not on very good speaking terms with us due to recent foreign policy decisions.